I am inspired to make a life-changing trip for the many women and children of Haiti who suffer under a widespread sexual violence epidemic in the post-earthquake tent cities that have formed there, where assault has become rampant.   As a surivor of domestic abuse I am personally committed to raise money to help these victims and ask for your help.

As you know, I am extremely passionate about empowering women to live healthy, happy lives. This passion was ignited not so many years ago when I myself survived domestic violence, and went in search of healing. Today I am stronger and happier than ever before, and as a result of my experience, I firmly believe that healing for women who have suffered abuse must come from an integrated mind-body approach.

A Boston organization called yogaHOPE is partnering with a group in Port-au-Prince called AMURT.  AMURT is creating safe spaces and programming for women and children who have been the targets of sexual violence.  Team yogaHOPE has just returned from Port-au-Prince where it began the first of what will be a series of trainings for Haitian Community Leaders in a powerful integrated yoga and mindfulness-based curriculum to aid in these women’s healing—most of whom are survivors of horrific sexual violence. Many of these women’s young children have also been raped, resulting in compound trauma for entire families.

I am one of ten Americans who have committed to raise $3,500 toward the project and will have the life-changing opportunity to go and train with the group in Haiti this April.  Please take a moment to watch this inspiring video of yogaHOPE’s inaugural training in Port-au-Prince.

100% of the money I raise will go to support this initiative, and I’ll be paying my own way to Haiti. I am hoping for 100 of my friends, family and supporters to donate $35 to my page. To some in Haiti, that is one third of a monthly salary; $100 will pay one of these Haitian Community Leaders’ salary for an entire month. What may seem like a little to you is so very much to others.

Please donate HERE!  If $35 is too much for you now, please consider giving $10, $15, $20.

Thank you so much in advance for making this possible, and for helping me pay my healing forward!

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Go ahead, let the gagging noises begin.  I don’t care if it makes people want to throw up.  I love this man. LOVE HIM, you hear me?!  

xo

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I’ve been dying to share this beautiful poem I read in The Sun magazine a few months ago, but I wanted to wait until it got closer to Valentine’s Day. It’s the perfect ode to someone from the past, for those times when you’re feeling all nostalgic…  

Previous Love

by Keith Althaus

Previous love,
think of the sky
above us still,
the parade
of clouds here,
the starlit evening
there, and this one
breath expelled
that you might
catch someday
on a street corner
after its long journey
across miles of ocean,
fields, and woods
that comb it,
take out the scent,
the taste, the sweet
stuff, until
there’s nothing left
of me or this place,
or just enough
to make you think,
standing on the curb,
waiting for the light,
of me, and us.

Originally published in The Sun

Photo by Meredith_Farmer

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I got this recipe from my friend and nutritionist Julie Starr-Wood.  The original recipe calls for a butterflied chicken, but I just buy the “whole cut-up chicken” that they sell at Trader Joe’s.  It’s easy and good, and we usually end up with leftovers that can be used in another meal.

 

Whole (Cut-Up) Chicken with Lemon and Rosemary  

 

1 whole cut-up chicken

3 long sprigs of fresh rosemary

Juice of 1 lemon, plus more lemons to serve

1 red onion

6 tablespoons olive oil

Sea salt

 

Put chicken into large freezer bag. Pull needles off 2 sprigs of rosemary and drop in bag. Cut the lemon in half and squeeze juices in bag, chucking the empty shells in afterward. Cut onion into eighths and add to bag too. Pour in olive oil and then tie up the bag and give it a good squeeze before sitting it in the fridge. Marinate chicken for 2 hrs or overnight in fridge.

 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees, if you have marinated chicken in fridge, try to let it come to room temp while oven is preheating. Lay flattened chicken, skin side up, on a pan lined with foil, along with the lemon husks and onion pieces, and add the remaining sprig of rosemary torn into a couple of pieces. Cook for 45 minutes.  At this point you can turn oven down to 300 and let it remain in oven after it is cooked through (this doesn’t over cook it, it makes it golden and tender).

 

Take pan out of oven, arrange chicken on plate, along with onion bits, then pour over any juices from pan and sprinkle with sea salt. Cut a lemon into quarters and scatter about the chicken J.

 

photo by jazzijava

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